In the HTML code of a web site, a META description tag is written like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”your content” />

As an example, the META tag for this particular post is:

<meta name=”description” content=”META description tag. (SEO Basics) What is a META description tag? What does a META description tag do? How can you optimize it? Examples provided.” />

To view the META description tag of a site, simply go to your browser toolbar or ‘right-click’ anywhere on your page and choose “view source”. The meta tag should be located near the top. Mine is approximately 14 lines down, including the blank lines.

Take a minute to check it out.

How Are META Description Tags Viewed in the SERPs?

Some search engines are temperamental, and like to grab snippets from your page to show beneath the title of your post.

Most of the time, your META tag information is viewed by searchers beneath the title of your page in the SERPs. (search engine results pages), especially if you are using a plugin such as All In One SEO Pack which allows you to manually apply META tags in WordPress admin post editing section, beneath the post.

Optimize META description tags for the search engines to ensure that your site has a better opportunity to rank highly for the words that you’d expect your potential target audience to use in their query.

Equally important, is optimizing the tag to appeal to your audience. You want to use it to draw the attention of your potential visitor. This is known as using ‘call to action’. E.g. for a technology blog like Knowledge Revolution you would want a call to action like “read the latest tech news now!”

The purpose of keywords meta is to tell the search engines what your content is about.

(**The lack of support for the META keywords tag may be due to spammers who seem to enjoy using this tag for “stuffing” hundreds of keywords of non-relevant data, in the hope of receiving a higher ranking with the search engines.)

How To Write META Keywords Tag In HTML

If you are unfamiliar with META keywords tag, take a look at this example: